things to read: july

If you haven't heard about the Prairieland defendants, these are 9 protestors convicted for protesting at an ICE detention center in Texas. You can read about their protest, the grisly sentencing, and one protestor's conviction over being in a book club. These folks are in prison for protesting the injustices they see in their community.

If you are able, their supporters ask us to send letters of support to these brave folks. Click here to find contact information for each person. Please also review the guidelines for what's acceptable to send. There are also links to send money to their commissary accounts.

The sun is finally shining here in Seattle. Temperatures are hovering in my favorite range: chilly in the morning, warm (but not too hot) during the day, and cool at night. I'm taking a short break while I recharge my writing battery. I'm hoping the charger is solar powered.

Stop Asking People to Think Like Planners, by Charles Marohn

Community engagement can be hard to get right for exactly the reasons in this essay. We often ask for ideas from people who may not think that way. I've waited an hour for a bus, but I don't know enough about the bus system to know how to fix my grumbling. Are more buses the right answer when budgets are tight? Do I know about the intersection several miles away that buses take forever to get through? Gather people's problems, come up with solutions, then work through them together. That will produce real and effective results.

It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.

That statement is often misunderstood as an argument against listening to customers. It isn't. Apple listened obsessively to customers. What [Steve] Jobs understood was that customers experience frustrations, desires, and obstacles. They do not necessarily experience solutions.

Lost Recipes, by Abe Beame

This article writes about american culture told through the pages of hip-hop magazines. These magazines covered musicians and issues that mainstream media never touched. Archivists and historians are working to preserve these stories now at risk of being lost forever.

“Oftentimes, when we're thinking about American journalism, we're thinking about Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, or Gay Talese, and they’re important. But we also need to think about Mimi Valdés and Bönz Malone and Bobbito Garcia,” Gates told me. “Hip-hop journalism was responsible for talking about American culture in a way that no one else was at the time. In a Source magazine in ’92, you could read about Palestine, you could read about Nelson Mandela being freed, you could read about a new demo tape on the way from a guy named Biggie Smalls. It showed a people's history of alternative culture that you're not getting from the mainstream publications.”

Calvin and Hobbes and the Price of Integrity, by Matthew Morgan

Ever wonder why there were no Hobbes dolls to keep the stuffed Garfields of the world company? It turns out that Bill Watterson made sure it would never happen. His righteous crusade, defending art against cheap commercialization, seemed quaint three decades ago. But in a world where art is both disposable content and IP, maybe he was onto something.

"For Watterson, craft has never been a side dish to the main course. It’s inextricable from the truths he wants to express and the meaning he hopes his work might have for its readers. It’s his belief that half a century ago, the best comics were more than amusing to look at; they were beautiful and undoubtedly counted as capital-A Art. Here in the mid-nineties, he 'can’t think of a single strip today that comes close to that standard of craftsmanship'."

All Hail the Cheese Enchilada, by Amy McCarthy

Is there any dish more perfect than the cheese enchilada? You can dress up an enchilada with all kinds of fillings and it will be delicious. But nothing beats a real Tex-Mex cheese enchilada: a melted river of cheese wrapped in a corn tortilla drenched in chili sauce, topped with raw onion and baked. This is still the only way I like eating raw onion. My mouth watered while reading this deep dive into one of my favorite dishes.

"When I have been away from Texas for more than about 48 hours, I start to crave a cheese enchilada. It’s not that they don’t exist in other places — of course they do, incredible Mexican food exists all over the country — it’s just that there’s no need for me to go in search of a great cheese enchilada when I am anywhere else, no reason to search for sand when I live in a vast desert dotted with more Tex-Mex temples than I can count. As a (mostly) lifelong Texan, that’s always what I come back home to, whether or not I’ve actually left the Lone Star State."